Comment by Alison Dellit
At the ALP national conference, a series of motions was passed condemning the proposal of up-front fees for undergraduate students, and calling for a review of the charging of fees for postgraduate courses, which was deregulated late last year. This is part of the Labor government's attempts to distance itself from the ANU situation, where the charging of up-front fees, led to massive student protest, including a nine-day occupation of the University Chancellery.
However, the ALP decision is rhetoric with no real substance. While the government may not have directly told the ANU administration to charge up-front fees, cuts to higher education funding, coupled with increasing deregulation, lead inevitably towards fees.
The ANU's decision to charge $5000 for legal workshop, a prerequisite for practice as a lawyer, is already being followed by other universities. Wollongong Uni plans to introduce a similar fee, and UTS has stopped funding College of Law, the NSW equivalent. At the same time, almost all Australian universities have introduced up-front fees for postgraduate courses in some form.
The only option that was expressly ruled out in the recent DEET/HEC working paper on higher education funding was increasing funding. Whether we are looking at up-front fees, loans schemes, increased HECS, or privatisation, paying for education will inevitably fall on the students. In order to understand what happened to "free education", it is useful to look back at the ALP's record.
Free tertiary education was first introduced by the Whitlam government in 1974. Since then it has been under attack. The Fraser Liberal government started to whittle away at it in 1980, with the introduction of partial up-front fees for overseas students. In 1981, the Liberals tried to introduce a loans scheme; this was defeated by mass student mobilisations and protest.
In 1986, the Labor government introduced full up-front fees for overseas students. Restructuring of education began. Many institutions merged, and smaller, specialised campuses were forced to streamline their courses.
In the same year, an up-front fee of $250 was introduced across the board. Mass student mobilisations, boycotts, rallies, marches and occupations erupted over campuses nationwide, which succeeded in defeating the fee in 1988. The government responded by introducing HECS in 1989. The movement had been weakened by cooption of many of its main leaders into the ALP, and it died away.
Over the last 10 years, higher education funding has decreased by 15% per student, and has been reduced by 1% of GDP — or about $4 billion. Real Austudy has declined to ridiculous levels, and instead of increases, loans schemes have been implemented.
Fee-charging universities like Bond University have emerged, along with proposals to increase HECS — either across the board or for certain degrees. There are up-front fees for postgrads, and most universities charge materials fees to undergraduate students. It is vital for student activists to understand that the latest attacks are just the ALP's next step in moving towards user-pays education.
The decision at the ALP national conference showed how scared the ALP is of mass mobilisations like those at ANU. In the last eight weeks ANU has achieved what the student movement has been unable to do over the last six years, forcing a back-down — no matter how tokenistic — from the ALP. But the goal has to be to win more than just temporary and token victories. We have to win back the ideological ground we have lost over the years, to reassert the value of free, equitable and accessible education.
We have to start again to emphasise that everyone benefits from an educated society, not just those who go through the schools and universities. In particular, education benefits businesses that rely on an educated work force to ensure their competitivety and therefore profits.
However, under the Labor government, business has had the greatest reduction in its contribution to higher education funding. The reduction of the company tax rate to 33%, combined with increased loopholes, means that companies are paying less tax than ever. We need to fight for an education system funded through a progressive taxation system, so those who benefit most from society put the most back in.
To do this, it is essential that we have a broad-based national campaign that can mobilise students to fight these attacks, and to regain the ground lost. The occupation at ANU was successful firstly because it sought to mobilise and draw in the largest number of students possible, and radicalised the whole campus, and secondly because the activists sought support from other sectors also suffering under the privatisation of education (i.e. the workers).
This is the kind of strategy we need to make a national education campaign successful, and to beat the restructuring of education. [Alison Dellit is a student at ANU, and was the media spokesperson for the occupation.]